A multi-disciplinary course taught by Anne Dalke and Laura Blankenship

Utopia

2009 January 29

by AH

So when I thought of what a gender and technology utopia would look like for the last class, I couldn’t come up with just one image since none seemed to suffice. I ended up with a combination of images that still didn’t show exactly what I’ve been thinking about, but would allow me to better explain my, as of now, still hazy idea. Originally I went searching for an image I liked that had a woman responding to the equivalent of a text message just floating in the air with an earpiece and some sort of a technologically functional necklace. Although I liked the image, the longer I looked at it the more that I realized that the relationship between gender and technology in the image were not necessarily an image of my ideal..just the technology part. The woman is dressed in close-fitting clothing, which I don’t mind, but I feel like that part of the image would not fully express my ideas. After finally finding that image I started really thinking about how I would imagine a utopia. The longer I thought about it the more I decided that my ideal relationship between gender and technology is a world in which technology enabled people to be whatever they wanted to be and express themselves better. Instead of looking at it as a perversion or departure from the natural I prefer to picture an enhancement or addition to the natural world. I don’t particularly like some of the popular images of the future that are often colored dully, with lots of metal, or perfectly pristine white enclosures. Some of the images that I added to my collection for class was an image of a robot wandering around in a forest, a digitally rendered ladybug that only vaguely appears unnatural, and a picture of a woman-looking person surrounded and slightly astounded if not worried by the abstract technological patterns around her. The last image sort of described how I felt when trying to find the right image and never quite getting it right as well as what of the inflections that I was trying to avoid. I don’t want technology in my utopia to be intimidating or overly overwhelming. I, personally, wouldn’t mind seeing technology expand it’s boundaries and become fully integrated into society/nature/culture/whatever. I just want to keep it as an open possibility for everyone, and not just my specific ideas, although since this is my utopia I would hope that everyone would make their best efforts to respect the diversity that this technology could entail.

I’ll try to remember to post the images when I have more time, but for now I thought that I should post something about it before I forgot.